Fringe World: The Urban Orchard, between Northbridge and Perth CBD, is a popular place to meet. Photograph: Tanya Voltchanskaya

While the big ticket in town might be the international arts festival, there are always gems to be found surrounding it. In Perth, Fringe World showcases these works that can be small, rough-and-ready, and – hopefully – every bit as affecting as their big international festival counterparts. It might take a bit of a hunt to find the gems, but the joy is in the chase. Here are our picks of the final week – let us know which shows have impressed you to date.

Between the Cracks

Yana Alana, the “diva extraordinaire” alter ego of performer Sarah Ward, burst on to Australia’s cabaret scene at the 2007 Melbourne Fringe, and has since played festivals all over the country, picking up a host of awards. More recently, she’s been sharing the stage with La Soirée and Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box. With a personality this huge though, it’s a real treat to get her full show.

Ward’s cabaret is known for being political, sexual, feminist and hilarious, and Between the Cracks won outstanding reviews at last year’s Melbourne Cabaret festival. With a 10:45pm timeslot and an 18+ rating, anything could happen – and probably will.

Squidboy

Squidboy: Sitting somewhere between comedy and clowning, it’s packed with delights and an emotional punch. Photograph: PR/Fringe World

The low-fi, slightly dorky, lone, probably bearded, male storyteller is so ubiquitous at fringe festivals the he almost needs his own category in the program.

In Perth, the star turn in this genre is Squidboy. New Zealand-raised, London-based performer Trygve Wakenshaw has been touring this show about “an imaginary friend who makes imaginary friends who make imaginary enemies” for two years across Australia and Europe, so Perth audiences should expect to be treated to a production that’s firmly found its feet. Sitting somewhere between comedy and clowning, it’s packed with delights and an emotional punch. Also, who can resist a man in a squid costume?

Second Hands

Second Hands: dynamic and honest theatre that resonates with, inspires and cultivates a Generation Y audience. Photograph: PR/Fringe World

A collection of exciting young Perth artists is behind Second Hands: writer Jeffrey Jay Fowler was behind Minnie and Mona Play Dead at 2013 Fringe World, which took home the award for Best New Western Australian Work, while production company Little y Theatre Company won Best WA Performance for Public Space. Little y aims to “create dynamic and honest theatre that resonates with, inspires and cultivates a Generation Y audience” – often best realised when done by Gen Y themselves. Fowler also directs this work, developed with its cast.

Hunger

A collaboration between dancers from China and Thailand isn’t a show you’d necessarily expect to appear in an Australian fringe festival, but Hunger is just that show. Travelling from the Bangkok Theatre festival and only in Perth for two performances, this quiet and small-scale two hander could provide an interesting insight into international contemporary dance at the other end of the scale from companies such as Batsheva in the international festival.

EDGE!

EDGE!: Take the world head-on and laugh in its face. Photograph: PR/Fringe World

Young Victorian artists Isabel Angus and Rachel Davis won Best Comedy at the 2013 Melbourne Fringe with EDGE!, a show about 11-year-old YouTube sensation Stella Wilkensen. Informed by a world of pop culture, saturated in reality television and celebrity gossip, in which young people in the public eye are over-scrutinised from day dot, sometimes the best way to deal with it is to take that world head-on and laugh in its face.

Andrew Frost considers the Japanese artist Ryota Kuwakubo's The Tenth Sentiment, an installation of dancing shadows cast by everyday objects that are caught in the headlights of a single moving model train. Kuwakubo's installation is showing at John Curtin Gallery as part of the 2014 Perth festival – you can read more from Andrew Frost on this artwork here